How Do You Know if They Don't Know?: The Design of Pre-Tests in Computing Education Research

As computing education expands to ''all'' students, so too must the assessment of computational learning. However, there are many challenges to designing and using computing assessments in a valid and reliable way. This is especially true with respect to pre-tests, or assessments given at the beginning of an intervention, course, or study. For elementary and middle school interventions, it is still likely that many students in any given study sample will have had no prior experience with computing. For high school interventions, students may have a wide range of prior experiences. How do you design or select a pre-test for these situations? In this poster, we discuss the design of pre-tests for the computing education research community. We outline the fundamental principles of pre-tests and the different purposes they serve in research studies. We complement these principles with examples of pre-tests used in current computing education research. This poster aims to provide guidance on how to intentionally develop and use pre-tests to strengthen the validity of our research findings and better inform on student learning outcomes.